


I Was Your Girl (In the World That Never Was)

by ScienceOfficerWillowRosenberg (left_handed_moth)



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV)
Genre: Additional Warnings In Author's Note, Angst with a Happy Ending, Consent Issues, Episode: s03e09 The Wish, F/F, Power Imbalance, Wishverse, and is further complicated by Willow's own status as the Master's minion, but like a shit ton of angst, sympathetic villains versus unsympathetic villains, that said sex and sexuality are very real presences here, the M rating is far more for violence than for sex, the dynamic between Buffy and Willow is very fraught in this one, the tags might make it look like the wishverse crosses over with the main timeline but no, this is more or less an AU of the Wishverse
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-09-21
Updated: 2019-05-16
Packaged: 2019-07-15 06:11:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 10
Words: 14,612
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16057172
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/left_handed_moth/pseuds/ScienceOfficerWillowRosenberg
Summary: Set in the Wishverse (sort of).  Vamp! Willow takes in a stray Slayer, and neither is free or safe.  The world is screwed-up and the kids are all wrong, and the difference between a monster and a lost young person is less clear than it might seem.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Many, many thanks to AliceInKinkland for her continuing beta-read of this work.
> 
> Update on, well, updates: I've got all but a little connective tissue in the final act outlined. I know where I'm going, how I'll get there, and, I hope what I'm going for. I'm busy enough, and reliant enough on my beta-reader that I know I can't update weekly, and probably will have irregular updates, but the month-and-change wait between chapters one and two won't be typical. Barring extreme circumstances, any hiatuses of that sort of length will come at half-decent points for a pause. The number of chapters may change up a little, not a lot, and I can fairly say that we're in this for the long haul.

_She said, "I'm tired of the war_  
_I want the kind of work I had before_  
_A wedding dress or something white_  
_To wear upon my swollen appetite"_

_\--Leonard Cohen, 'Joan of Arc.'_

 

******

Buffy summers was so tired.  She could size up the best layout for a fight that any graveyard had, but they still all looked the same to her.  Restfield Cemetery was no exception. Angels, monoliths, mausoleums, and just plain headstones. Once upon a time she’d have gotten a kick out of any funny names or weird epitaphs, but that was a different Buffy.  A Buffy with living parents, who didn’t sleep in motels or the back of a van. That was three years and uncountable cities ago. 

And there was her vamp.  Ginger, short.  Based on the BDSM prom dress she was wearing, Buffy would guess that she’d been sired recently, certainly not before goth was a thing.  And she hadn’t seen Buffy yet. Buffy drew her crossbow and got to cover. The first shot went wide. She figured she’d only have time for one more before she had to go hand-to-hand.  Which she never wanted to do, if she could help it. She started to reload. The vamp was heading her way. Moving fast. She got off the second shot, which would have been right on target if the vamp hadn’t tried to do some kind of Matrix dodge.  Instead it went through the underside of her jaw, and stuck out the right cheek. All soft tissue. It probably hurt like a bitch, but you never knew if that would slow one of these things down. Half of them just got off on it.

Which appeared to be the case here.  The vamp pulled it out slowly. “Always wanted a pierced tongue,” she said, with the lisp of someone who’d just gotten a very primitive version of that very thing.  Theatrics like that are a slayer’s best friend. Buffy had time to swap out her crossbow for a stake in one hand and a knife in the other.

“Ooh, you’ve got all kinds of toys!” said the vamp.  The look of delight on her face made her look young. She was young.  Buffy’s age. Maybe younger. “Are you a new White Hat?”

“Something like that.”

Buffy lunged with the knife, and the vamp grabbed her wrist.  Buffy yanked her close and went for a headbutt, then a knee to the gut.  The vamp released her, but didn’t double over as hard as Buffy was hoping.  So that was a serious-business corset, not a sex shop discount-rack corset.

“You’re good!”  The vamp threw a punch.

Buffy blocked. “Glad I live up to your standards.”

“I mean it!”  Punch. “I’m not one of those people that just says nice things.”  Kick. “I’m honest.” Punch.

Buffy dodged, and delivered a high kick to the vamp’s wounded jaw.  As she reeled from the blow, Buffy tackled her and went in for a staking.  The vamp knocked the stake from her hand, then grabbed ahold of Buffy’s throat.  She could have just snapped Buffy’s neck then and there, but she rolled the two of them over instead.  She had Buffy pinned.

Without even thinking, Buffy softly whimpered, “Please don’t.”

“You’re kind of chokey, could you repeat that?”  The vamp loosened her grip on Buffy’s throat a little.

“Please don’t kill me.”  This time she spat it out.

“Funny you should say that.  I kind of don’t wanna.”

  
“You do realize that means _I’ll_ kill _you_.”

“I mean, I’ve got you stuck here pretty good.  I don’t think you will. Oh, by the way, my name’s Willow.  Didn’t want to be rude and not introduce myself.”

“So, what, we just chat until the sun comes up?”

“I guess.  Crazy question, but are you the slayer?  You hit really hard for a human.”

“Would that change your mind about not killing me?  I hear that I’m kind of a catch, after all.”

Willow smiled, almost warmly.  “I had a lot of fun with you tonight.  If I kill you, we’ll never see each other again.”

“Well, I wasn’t planning on staying around town that long.”

Buffy looked Willow up and down, trying to find a spot to strike, which wasn’t easy from her position.

“Are you checking me out?”  Willow giggled.

“Very much not.”

“It’s cool, I’m flattered.  Hey, you wanna come home with me?”

“Again with the not.”

“Too bad.  Because if you don’t, I’m gonna have to really kill you, and then we’ll both be sad.”

Buffy was tired, for sure, tired of just about everything.  But she wasn’t ready to die. Maybe she had a scrap of hope left after all, or maybe her survival instinct wasn’t quite broken yet.  She might win the fight somehow. This might end up being just another brush with death. And then she’d find the cheapest place in town to crash, enjoy her nightmares, and have another brush with death tomorrow night.  And then one night, it wouldn’t be a brush. Probably soon. She was sloppy tonight. She’d been sloppy for a while. If nothing changed, she’d be on the run and fighting for her life right until the day she lost the fight for her life.

She sighed hard.  Or, as hard as she could, with the limited airflow.  “Sure,” she said.

Willow helped her up, and took her hand.  “I didn’t catch your name, by the way.”

“Buffy.”

Willow laughed.  “Seriously?”

“Yeah,”

“Okay, Buffy.  Let’s get you some rest.”

Coming from any other mouth, those would have been the most welcome words in the world.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Welcome to Casa del Lair-o. Lair-a? I don't know my made-up Spanish grammar."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Two notes on our supporting cast.
> 
> 1\. Shan is Chanterelle/Lily/Anne from Lie To Me, Anne, and far too few Angel episodes. I couldn't find a way to drop that into this chapter organically, but I didn't intend it to be a twist or a reveal or anything, so, yeah, that's who the character tag is referring to.
> 
> 2\. OH NO OH FUCK IT'S WARREN. Yeah. I know. I needed someone like him for a plot role that'll be apparent in a couple chapters, and I hate making OCs. Vamp Warren is going to be just as loathsome as canon Warren, but I want to make him significantly less unpleasant to have 'onscreen.' Which is to say, I've dialed the misogyny back. Specifically, I'm taking a lot of what was toxic about his mindset and detaching it as best I can from real-world structures of oppression. And I've found a way to have him serve his role in the story effectively without him showing up very often.

As they walked further from the graveyard, the houses got newer, the lawns bigger, and the streets less grid-like.  Vampires in the burbs, then. Buffy grew up in a neighborhood like this. Now they were strictly for passing through.

“We’re just a couple streets down,” said Willow.

“This place is pretty populated.  Thought you guys were all about the lurking.”

“Only when we don’t own the town.”  Willow didn’t elaborate.

Willow stopped them in front of a large house.  As soon as they got to the front walkway, a number of lights came on.  The house’s windows, and there were a lot, were painted over with art that Buffy was pretty sure her mom would have referred to as Fauvist.  One way to keep out sunlight, she guessed.

Willow walked them to the stoop and knocked.  The door swung open, which either meant her lair-mates were careless about intruders, or that the two of them had already been identified on the walk to the door.

In the front room were two vampires.  A dark-haired guy about Buffy’s age in a loud button-down, and a blonde woman who was probably in her thirties.

Willow gestured.  “Darla, Xander. Buffy.”

“Rocky!” said the guy.

“Yes, Xander, that was a movie you saw multiple times,” said the blonde. Darla, by process of elimination.  She turned to Buffy. “You’re a human.”

Willow smiled wide.  “She’s the Slayer. She’s fun.  I wanna have her around.”

“Willow, sweetie, let’s...step aside.”  Darla took Willow by the hand. There was a look of genuine concern on Willow’s face.  Buffy had seen more softness from her tonight than she had from any vampire, ever. Even filtered through a mindset that seemed as detached from reality as it was from morality, watching Willow threw her off.

They stood there in the foyer.  Buffy looked down at her boots. Xander was giving her the once-over, though Buffy couldn’t tell if it was as a piece of food, a piece of ass, or a piece of danger.

“See anything interesting?” she said.

“You look normal,” he said.

“Yeah, that’s what all the people they interviewed for the news back home said.”

Xander smiled.

“Willow’s not all there, is she?” said Buffy.

“Getting sired can mess with you.  Sometimes she  _ is _ all there, and most of the time she's more or less there--like 80, 90 percent--and just doing a bit to mess with you.  In any case, that’s not what’s dangerous about her.”

“No, I’d imagine that’d be the fangs and super-strength.”

“You’ve got that too, right?  Super-strength?”

“Yeah.  Whole slayer package.  Reflexes, strength, nightmares, target on your head, all that good stuff.”

“We’re supposed to kill you.  Pretty sure it works that way most of the time.”

“Yeah.  Your girlfriend didn’t get the message.”

“Willow?  Oh, no. No no no.  She’s pretty much exclusively gay, for one, and when it comes to anyone Darla sired, she thinks it’d be all  _ Flowers in the Attic  _ or something.”

“Look who’s literary.”

“I saw the movie.”

Darla waved Xander over.  He walked to her, and Willow took his place watching Buffy.  They were smart enough not to give her too much space to run.

Willow patted Buffy's shoulder and spoke in a lowered voice.  “So, Darla’s gonna make a phone call.  Grandpa likes to pretend he doesn’t know how to use phones, so he’ll just listen to the answering machine.  We’ll drive over on the assumption that he’s not busy, and he’ll give the OK for you to crash here, and then girls’ night!  But with Xander. I mean, Grandpa’s basically the new mayor, so if he says you’re good, you’re good.”

Buffy had a question about pretty much every clause of what Willow had said, but she decided her best option was to ask none.

Instead she just said “I might just need some sleep.”

“Yeah, fair.  You’re the just, so you get to have the sleep thereof.  We’re all wicked here. No rest for us! Do you snore?”

“Sometimes I kick.”

“Oh, that’s totally fine.”

Xander stepped over to them.  He opened his mouth to speak, but Willow cut him off.

“So, first impression of the Slayer?  She’s cool, right?” she turned to Buffy and said, in a conspiratorial stage whisper, “I really want him to like you.  The best friend test is a big deal.”

Xander smiled, “Yeah, she’s alright.”

This time the stage whisper was directed at Xander.  “And  _ incredibly _ hot, right?”

“You think every girl is incredibly hot.”

“Yeah, because I’m smarter than you.”

Darla breezed passed them, snapping her fingers.

“Gotta go.  Be back soon.  Don’t worry, I'll be back with good news,” said Willow.  She gave Buffy a baseball coach butt-pat, and hurried after Darla.

Xander smiled.  “That, right there?  That was her doing a bit. She’s a trip and a half, isn’t she?”  Apparently friendship really did exist among the undead. Buffy had sort of assumed they stayed together for safety, and then just all betrayed each other at the first opportunity.  She needed a minute alone to think. And she needed to pee. Which was an easy excuse to snag that minute alone.

“Speaking of  _ gotta go _ , is this one of the vampire lairs that has a working bathroom, or am I gonna have to find a bucket?  Because mortal peril? Basically espresso.”

“Down the first hall, last door on the left.  The shower still works, so I assume the toilet does.  Not that I know the first thing about how houses are put together.”   Xander didn’t follow her. Apparently vamps could be gentlemen.

The bathroom was nice, which was unusual.  Buffy had noticed that one of the side-effects of unlife was that you stop caring if you live in a mess.  Which, honestly, so had Buffy, at some point.

Buffy stared at the tile as she sat, until the whole world was just a chipped checkerboard.  The feeling of her elbows digging into her knees brought her back into her body. She hadn’t noticed when she’d stopped peeing, but it had probably been a while ago.

And the toilet did work, thankfully.  They had girly hand soap, and the hot water was genuinely hot.  It had been a while. Buffy let herself think it was nice.

She dried her hands, and exited.  She barely resisted throwing a punch at the figure lurking in the door across from her.  He had spiky brown hair, and the fashion sense of someone who’d been informed of the basic principles of how to dress, but had absolutely no emotional connection to the clothes he wore.

“You’re disgusting,” he said.  “I could hear you through two closed doors.  Smell you, too.”

“Well, get used to it.  Eventually I’ll even have to go number two.”

“You’ll be in a cage waiting to be drained before the sun’s up.”

“Someone’s got issues with pretty girls.”

“Who, you? God, no.  You’re a living thing.  You stink of it.  Pit-sweat, crotch-juice, the stuff between your teeth.  You’re why I'm proud I flunked bio.”

“And you’re a dick.”

“Just try me.  Mortals die all the time.  For all they know you slipped and cracked your head open on the sink.”

Buffy had him up against the wall by his throat in a second.  She barely caught Xander shouting.

“Hey!  Hey hey hey.  Whoa. Warren.  Buffy. Whoa.”

The vamp--Warren--smirked, “Hey yourself, Harris.  Articulate as ever, I see.”

“Don’t call me by my dad’s name, Warren,” Xander half-shouted.  His voice softened, “Put him down, Buffy.”

“I will if he doesn’t bite me.”

“Yeah, fair.  Warren, she’s here under truce.  Darla’s truce. ‘Kay?”

“Ugh, fine.”  Warren threw up the hand that wasn’t pinned behind his back. “Just keep her in the east wing.”

“She’s gonna be sitting in the foyer.”

“Anteroom.”

“Rich-people-foyer.”

“Idiot.”

“Asshole.”

Buffy released him.  It’d have been satisfying if he dropped to the floor in a heap, but he landed gracefully on two feet.  Fucking vampire reflexes.

She stared him down as they walked back to the front room.  They sat down and waited.

“So that guy’s a charmer,” said Buffy.

Xander smiled apologetically. “Warren’s our tech guy.  So is Willow, actually, but she does software stuff. Which is why we’re stuck with him.  If she’s extra murderous, it’s probably because they’re doing a group project.”

“Does he have any good qualities?”

“I mean, he was way worse when he got here.  Darla put the fear of God into him. Or, fear of Darla, more accurately.  I dunno. He’s a decent Tekken opponent.”

“What’s a Tekken?”

Xander shook his head. “Can’t have everything, I guess.  Anyway, welcome to Casa del Lair-o. Lair-a? I don’t know my made-up Spanish grammar.”

“Willow said something about you guys owning this town?”

“Yeah.  Three years ago there was this thing called the Harvest.  A bunch of people died, a bunch of other people got sired, and this guy called the Master set up sort of a shadow vampire government.  Like, the humans still pave the roads and all, but when night falls, it’s us. Some vamps were here to make it happen, like Darla, but there are also a lot of townies, like me and Will.”

“Townies?”

“We grew up here.  Got bit during the Harvest.  Ended up working for the Master because he’s the only game in town.  Like, Warren’s a true believer, but honestly, that guy gives me Sunday school flashbacks.  Willow thinks he’s boring. And Shan just...she doesn’t believe in much of anything anymore.”

“Shan’s someone who lives here too?”

“She doesn’t go out much.  She doesn’t even like to hunt, which, like, you gotta be  _ seriously _ depressed.  Or a freak like Warren.”

“Anyone else?”

“Nope.  Darla, Rosenberg & Mears Engineering, Shan, and me."

“Why do you even need tech people?”

“We’re going neolithic.  Sunnydale's the cradle of vampire civilization.  Hunter-gatherers, meet agriculture. And we’re on a thingy.  Mystical thingy of evil. I don’t exactly know how that works.  Anyway, that’s our Tigris and Euphrates. Humans are our oxes or oxen or whatever, or possibly wheat, and Warren’s, I dunno, Mesopotamian farm-tools guy.  The creator of the plow, only no one wants to let him plow their fields.” He paused, as if waiting for some reaction from Buffy. “That, uh, that last part was me disparaging his sex appeal, not ancient history.  If you couldn't tell.”

Buffy was silent.  Looks like they'd both gotten the Mesopotamia unit under their belts before normal life ended, so depending on curricula, they'd have been classmates.  That was a thought. She knew what he was talking about, human livestock and all, except for what exactly constituted farm tools here. If she got an answer, she’d probably want to drive east and not stop.  But she’d been coasting from devil she knew to devil she knew for years now. She’d finally found the devil she didn’t. The saying said that was the worse option. Buffy wasn’t so sure. At least this devil bothered to say two words to you.  And this devil had decent air conditioning, two-ply, and floors she could walk on bootless without worrying about having to pay for a tetanus shot.

Of course, there was always the possibility that Grandpa--Willow called him the new mayor, which almost certainly meant he was this Master guy--would just say to kill her, and then, well, fight, chase, drive, stop, lie down, rinse, repeat.  And Xander alone would be an easier kill than Xander, Willow, and Darla together.

She put her feet up anyway, and waited.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Darla takes Willow to see the Master, and to ask his permission for Buffy to stay.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter-Specific Content Notes: There's one sentence in the paragraph describing Xander's siring that's part of why this story earns the 'graphic depictions of violence' warning tag.

Willow was kinetic and talkative all the way from the door to the passenger's seat.  Darla would say  _ chatty _ , but chat requires some attention to one's interlocutor.  Darla was, nonetheless, glad to see it.

“In my head,” said Willow, “it was gonna be this whole homoerotic archenemy thing, but I guess that's mostly for movies where they don't want the gay people to actually like each other.  I think being roomies is probably going to be better than that, even if that whole thing is, you know, really hot.”

When Willow was first sired, she was unceasingly verbal, and animated by the imp of the perverse, to the point where she seemed fairly erratic.  Darla thought she'd gotten a Drusilla raised on Groucho instead of Byron. But there was a deliberateness to her unpredictability, and her lucid periods were more thorough and more sustained than Dru's ever were.  Darla thought that, though her mind may well have been bruised in transit, she was, in her way, doing what both teenagers and fresh vampires do; she was asserting her presence in the world, and trying on outrageous selves to see what fit.  And recently, she’d become desperate about it.

The ennui always hit after the initial rush of being a vampire.  Everyone agreed on that.  _ Ennui _ was a word they used to make it sound French, with everything beautiful implicit in Frenchness.  But anyone who’d been through it knew it felt like an Anglo-Saxon monosyllable. With Willow, the rush had been short, and the monosyllable had hit hard.

Darla knew why.  Hellmouth aside, Sunnydale was, to use another term she wished had been in use as she and her old, lost family cut a bloody trail through Europe, a bullshit town.  The demonic parts, their parts, had history. The human parts didn’t. Darla had lived through the rise of the suburbs and though there was the slaughter and torture and blood sort of soulless, there was also the white picket fence sort.  Willow would have been a beautiful part of Darla’s whirlwind, but was unsuited to the stability of a burgeoning demonic utopia. It was choking her.

Willow put a hand on her knee.  Darla glanced into the rearview and saw a look of concern on her face. “What do we say?  Everybody wants to kill the Slayer. I mean, grandpas spoil their grandkids, but...Slayer.”

Darla was the reverse of certain, even as to whether she wanted to spare the Slayer.  They could drive away right now. Leave the Slayer to be prey, the others to be good little citizens, and go.  But her Master would hunt them down. He wasn’t going to let Darla go again, because he knew she’d never come back.  He brought her back this time with promises of reunion with Angelus. Upon finding him she saw her boy broken, forever weak.  Now there was only one thing that she would care about losing, and that was her sweet child. Escape might be what would keep her safest.  But her child cared about the boy Xander, and now about the Slayer, and these attachments were, as Darla had learned over the centuries, not easily shaken off.  Loneliness can wither a vampire just as easily as boredom.

They’d arrived at City Hall.  Her Master-- _ the _ Master, he was a public figure now--had set up in the mayor’s office, mostly as a symbolic assertion of power.  Deconsecrated churches were the old standard, but times had changed. The mortal government had the building by day, they did by night.  It wasn’t an official agreement, but dusk and dawn were stronger enforcers than any police force or vampire militia. This was without old Wilkins, of course, may he rest in peace.

And there was her Master, feet up on the desk, drinking blood from a Bear Flag mug.  “So,” he said, “Justify yourselves. Explain to me why we deviate from standard Slayer procedure.”

“She’s cool.” said Willow, pre-empting any case Darla could make.

“Yeah, kiddo, there are a lot of cool mortals out there.  One of the rough parts of this whole thing.  My advice is don’t get attached. You’ll get it after your first round of die-offs.  Those happened quicker in my day.”

“When even was your day?  Darla never told me.”

Darla's Master smiled.  “And I never told her. Now.  Darla. This is a Slayer we have.  We kill Slayers. Then we wait for the next one, and we kill that one too.  Sunnydale’s a grand social experiment, sure, but this is something we’ve had figured out since I looked like one of you two.”

Darla opened her mouth to speak, but Willow cut her off.  “There’s more than one Slayer? Like, they just keep respawning?”

“Yes, if that word means what it sounds like it does.” He turned to Darla.  “Sweetheart, what are you teaching these kids?”

In fact, Darla hadn’t been negligent, but had deliberately withheld information.  Slayer-mania was at best a waste of time and at worst a way to get turned to dust.  It seduced too many young vampires, and Willow had shown enough interest to alarm Darla.

The Master continued, to no one in particular, “I swear, we have to get publicly mandated schooling for the fresh-bits set up as soon as possible.  Provided I can get this town to agree to any sort of core curriculum. I think I liked having subjects a lot better than I like having citizens, but that cat's been out of the bag for centuries.  But I digress. A Slayer is a Slayer is a Slayer.”

Willow mouthed the word “School?” to Darla.  She looked beyond indignant. Darla gave her the  _ not now _ look.

“I’ve seen this Slayer, Master,” said Darla, “She’s breaking down, the way they do.  The death wish is going to set in, and soon.”  It was an educated guess.  


Darla’s Master looked skeptical.  “Which means it’ll be crueler to kill her now.  In this town, we like cruelty, remember?”

“Or,” said Darla, with the confidence of someone who hadn't just thought to take this angle, “we could refuse to let her die.”  


“And then there wouldn’t be a next Slayer.  I shouldn’t have doubted you.”

“She’ll age, of course, but we’ve both lived long enough to know how quickly history is made.”

Her Master grinned as warmly as his face allowed.  “It will be our world again. The next Slayer will just be so much prey.”

“And in the meantime, my girl will be very happy.”

“Of course.  Anything for my Darla’s family.”  His voice sounded like it had been dragged unwillingly through a pool of treacle.   “You spoil her, you know. Like with the Harris boy.”

“His name’s Darling now,” said Willow firmly.

Willow had insisted Darla sire Xander alongside her, given that she'd never spare him.  The boy had been her friend forever, she said. Bite him or kill me, she said. Darla wasn’t one for mercy, but she’d intended to sire Willow, and she wasn’t in the habit of not getting what she wanted out of a negotiation.  Darla predicted a reprise of Spike, for whom, though her other childer were fond of him, she'd come to regret that the term  _ poser _ had not yet been coined.  As it happened, Xander ceased to have anything to prove following his first kill.  He drove a fire-poker through his father's heart, changed his surname to Darling--Darla knew that he was thinking far more of the Peter Pan connotation than showing honor or gratitude to her for making him what he was, but coaxing a literary reference out of the boy was nearly as good--and was done with it.

“Yes, of course, I remember now” said the Master.  “New unlife, new name, all that. Now, leave me be.  And Willow? Go have fun with your new gal pal. Take this.”

He tossed a bracelet, which Willow caught with not just aplomb, but flourish.  Upon examination, it was a merging of the amphisbaena and ouroboros; a serpent with heads at each end, circling back on itself as each head tried to devour the other alive.

“She’s under your protection now,” he said, “and you are under Darla’s, and Darla’s is under mine.  I’m sure a programmer can figure out what that means.” He turned his back dramatically. “Okay, now this time I’m really kicking you two out.”

They got in the car.  Willow put in her sixties mixtape.  Darla hated guitar groups, but she’d indulge her favorite child on nights like this.  By the time the two got home, they’d heard ‘I’ve Just Seen A Face’ so many times that Darla had forgotten it had a beginning or an end.  Young love was like that, and the presence or absence of a soul was immaterial. Surely, all of Willow’s thought was an unbroken series of refrains declaring infatuation.  Like Darla’s own was, after her first kill with Angelus. It wouldn’t last, but neither would this Slayer, though Darla would never say anything to that effect. Willow deserved the mercy of finding it out on her own.

Willow walked into the door with a triumphant flourish.  She silently extended a hand, bracelet around her middle and index fingers, toward a confused-looking Buffy.

“Pretty edgy jewelry there.”

“It’s for you.  It means, hey, no one mess with this chick, because the transitive property of touch-her-and-you-die means that you’re pretty much safe from any vamp in the city, or else Grandpa does bad things to them.”

“The way you’re dressed, I was expecting a collar.”

Willow scoffed.  “Collars are for puppies, and I already have a puppy.  You’re my kitten. And cats are very independent animals.”

“Got it.” Buffy clasped the snake's twin heads together, and shook her wrist for emphasis.  “Miss Kitty Fantastico the Slayer. Fantastica?” She shrugged. “There's not a GPS tracker or something in this, is there?”

Willow said there wasn't.  Darla thought there wasn't, but her Master was the Master and Buffy was the Slayer.  She'd tell Willow to check, and to remove any sort of miniature contraption she found.  She wouldn't need to tell her not to take it to Mears. The absence of a soul hadn’t impaired Willow’s capacity for antipathy any more than it had impaired her capacity for affection, the latter of which necessitated Darla's absence at this moment.  She doubted that the Slayer had properly conversed with her Willow yet, and Darla herself was a hindrance to this.

She'd have to monitor the Slayer, of course, but she would leave Willow bereft only for Willow's own good, not the greater good.  She'd shed that notion even before she'd shed her soul.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Willow and Buffy have their first proper conversation on the way to get Buffy's stuff back to the lair.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content notes: A little bit more on Vamp!Willow's mental health. This'll be unfolding for awhile as we get to know her. It's complicated.

Buffy checked her watch.  Wherever Buffy traveled, there was a point at night where she just couldn't stand to be out any longer, and she conceded the town to the vamps until dawn.  They'd passed that point a couple hours ago. But a van full of, well, her life, was back downtown, waiting to get jacked or worse. 

“I need to get my stuff, Willow.”

“Cool.  Where'd you park?”

“Garage past Restfield.  Little bit of a hike.”

“Then let's go.  We have time.”

“Do we?”

“Oh yeah.  There's way more night than you guys think there is.  Mortals, I mean. Folks should be clocking out and having a little fun.”

They exited the door.  Sure enough, it was still black and moonless.

“This time of night, the town's pretty lively.  With, you know, not live people.”

Buffy didn't know what to say.  Was Sunnydale that thoroughly taken-over?

“We have a nightlife here.  Night unlife. You know. Speakeasies, dancehalls, fight clubs, all sorts of things.  Heck, Mom--Darla, not bio-mom.  Necro-mom, I guess--goes to this book club for older vamps who want to catch up on important stuff they overlooked at the time.”

“You mean like in basements?”

“Used to be.  We’re kind of getting more in the mortals’ faces about it now that the white hats figured out they have better things to do than bust us up.  We rotate locations, still. It’s this whole word of mouth thing. I like it. Feels all counterculture.”

Sure enough, the whole time they'd been walking, there were lights on in seemingly random buildings.  Before this, Buffy hadn’t seen any vampires out hunting, and thought that meant Sunnydale had quiet nights.  Before she and Willow crossed paths, she’d been planning to call it a wash and leave in the morning. Clearly, she was wrong.  She wondered how many other cities had hidden vamp populations that she hadn't even made a dent in.

“That house we just passed was hosting Renfield fights, last time I checked.”

“What's a Renfield fight?”

“I don't know how common it is, but it's when vampires have humans fight each other, pretty much no-holds-barred.”  There's no way Willow didn't see Buffy's shocked expression. “The coaches normally give the fighters protection or money or favors or something.  They're supposed to, you know, make it worth their while. It's illegal as far as Grandpa's concerned, but, hey, evil. Honestly he just doesn't like deals with humans going on behind his back.  You'd kick ass, but I don't really feel okay about the way they do Renfield fighting here.”

Buffy certainly hoped so.

Willow continued, “Most of the coaches are alright, but no one enforces the contracts.  Which means you get some bad apples. The fighters who get too hurt to fight, or who want out for their own reasons, are supposed to be able to go back to normal life after their last fight, but, and sorry for sounding preachy here, all too often the coaches just kill them so they won't blab to the authorities or the white hats.”

“That's horrible!”  Buffy blurted it out, even though, no duh the vampire town is horrible, and even though she was trying to play it cool about what she'd walked into.

“I mean, yeah, but where do you draw the line? I've considered reporting them, but I know a couple of the coaches, and, you know, they vouch for a lot of the rest.  And Grandpa’s mister zero tolerance, so, I dunno. It’s a mess.”

It occurred to Buffy that Willow was describing a society.  A brutal one, sure, but populated by people who did evil that was still recognizable as human.  Not demons with alien motives, and not animals.

She looked at Willow again, called Xander's face to mind.  They looked like her. Without the fangs and bumps, it was easy to think of them as other young people growing up quick in a tough world.  That was how people put it, right?

“Change of topic, you're how I figured out I was a lesbian.”

“Tonight?”

“No, I mean you the Slayer.  Way before we met, I heard that there was this girl called the Slayer, and she was super strong, and super hot in most versions of the story.  Darla told me that, yeah, that's a real thing. And then I started to daydream about fighting her, I mean you.”

“Like ya do.”

“Only I kinda stopped before the part where I killed you.  Like, that wasn't part of the fantasy, just what was supposed to happen.”

“Lucky me.”

“Yeah.  Mostly I just focused on the trading blows, and the talky parts, and the, uh, the wrestling.  Like, even before I knew what was up, I definitely spent a whole lot of time picturing us rolling around on the grass.”

“Our fight was kinda light on that part.”

“Yeah.  You weren't all that handsy during what there was, either.  Almost like the fight was for real and not a daydream in the head of a closet case.”

“Wild.”

“Mom knew it was a gay thing right away.  She's really good at telling when a fantasy's a sexy one.  Old job skill.”

What job, thought Buffy, and how old?

“What did I look like?  Like, this probably sounds really weird, but did you expect skinny, bags under the eyes, overdue for a shave?”  Buffy was dancing around the question of whether or not she was a letdown. She didn't care about Willow being disappointed, but it would be nice for someone to see the big bad Slayer and not a scared girl.

“I didn't expect anything.  They were fantasies. You looked like whatever actress or singer I was crushing on at the time, even if she was like 40.”

“Oh.”

“Come on, I'm only human.”  Willow must have been aware of the irony, but she didn't let on.

They were nearing the spot.  Top of the parking garage with the best eastern exposure in town. Buffy was at the point where she really wasn't looking forward to that many stairs.

“You know,” she said, “You're pretty linear right now.  Where was that chick earlier?”

“She was hiding.”  Buffy had expected some kind of evasion disguised as a quirky misunderstanding, but Willow clarified.  “I'm more together than I act. Xander knows, and I think Mom does too. But it's kind of a self-preservation thing.  If they think I'm circus-crazy, they don't take me seriously. It's a big loud way of keeping a low profile. Don't get me wrong, screws really do get loose.  But it's different from how I act. Mostly.”

“Crazy like a fox, huh?”

“Sure, if the fox genuinely did have some stuff.”

They walked in silence for what felt like a long while.  Willow's face had gone a little heavy after that last piece of conversation.  Buffy didn't know what to say, so she just stayed quiet until they reached the parking garage.

“Top floor,” said Buffy.

“That's a lot of stairs,” said Willow.

“That's my line.  You guys don't even get tired legs.”

“No, but staircases are super boring.  They're too samey. You forget where you are.  It bothers me.”

She did look bothered when they got to the van.  It was your generic plain van, no windows in back.  Buffy'd gotten help from a guy at an auto shop to change it from white to maroon.  The unmarked white van is suspicious. Switch to a non-flashy color and it looks like the person driving could be something besides a cop or a creep.

She unlocked the back.  Willow crawled inside pretty much as soon as Buffy was out of her way. She started going through the clothes on the floor.  Buffy could slam the door, lock it, and be two towns over by sunrise.

Instead of doing that, she said, “Hey, you know I could shut the doors on you and drive away right now, right?”

“You need socks and underwear,” said Willow.  Somehow that made Buffy feel like not slamming the door was the right choice.

“Yeah, I do.  Did you hear what I said, though?”

“Oh, yeah, for sure.  This is a total kidnapper van.”

Buffy shook her head, “Jesus, you really don’t have any self-preservation instinct, do you?”

“Just a lot of confidence.”  She stood up--she was taller than Buffy, but not much, so she barely had to bend over--stepped to the cot, pillow, and stuffed pig.  “What’s his name?”

Buffy blushed.  “Mr. Gordo.”

“He looks kinda skinny to me.”

“Yeah.  I was little.”  Buffy saw how Willow was looking at her sleep spot.  “Don’t worry. Bed of last resort. I could find places to stay.  Mostly not ones I had to pay for. I just, you know, couldn’t ever  _ stay  _ stay.”

“How come?”

“I mean, they’d see that the picture on my license was actually Buffy Anne Summers, not Fakey Normal Girl, and then they’d see that Buffy Anne Summers didn’t have a real license of her own.  Then they’d find out what happened to Buffy Anne Summers and try to find Buffy Anne Summers a legal guardian. Maybe that last part’s moot now. Depends how far into the year we are.”

“I dunno.  Short nights, lots of downtime.  Go ask an astrologer.”

“Yeah, right?  Anyway, there’s all that plus the weapons, so I get going before I stop being a stranger.”

That was with the mundanes.  Buffy’d been going online at the libraries that had internet and would let her.  There were a lot of monster-hunter networks, with safehouses. She stayed with them until it looked like the Slayer shoe might drop, then bailed.  She knew that that one guy, whose name she forgot but whose corpse she remembered, wasn’t the only Watcher in the world. She also knew that Watchers only got there after worse things did.  She figured if Willow knew about this stuff, and she probably did, she didn’t need Buffy telling her. And if she didn’t, then everyone out there on the web fighting the good fight didn’t need Buffy telling her.  And anyway, Sunnydale was a blank spot on those sites. No one was from there, and no one talked about it. She’d checked archives, but there was nothing. Presumably, vamps like Willow and Warren had scrubbed them.

“Well,” said Willow, “Let’s get you unpacked.”

“We’re not going to walk all this back to your place.”

Willow gave an exaggerated slap of her forehead.

“Come on, be straight with me.”

“I mean, I’m gay with you or I’m gay with some other girl, but either way, I’m pretty sure if I’m with you, it’s not straight.”

Fine.  Willow trusted her enough to let on that some of the wacky was a mask, but not enough to drop that mask for very long.  Buffy couldn’t blame her.

“Come on, get in the passenger’s seat.  I’ll let you be in charge of the radio.”

Willow smiled.

The drive back was soundtracked by pretty much the same classic rock station you could pick up anywhere on a drive.  Willow apologized for that. No human DJs worked the night shift, and as long as mortals could pick up the signal too, vampire radio wasn't a possibility.  So once the sun went down, everything was canned.

There weren't any other cars on the road.  Minimal on-street parking. “Do vampires drive?” asked Buffy.

“Not the young townies or the real crusty oldsters, but otherwise you pretty much have to.  Never know when you have to skip town. A lot of us from before the Harvest are really excited to settle down here.  We, like, vampires in general, don't know our history so well. But Grandpa says this is unprecedented. He could be hyping himself, but it seems at least a little true.”

Buffy thought of Xander's Sumeria comparison, reached back to her various social studies classes.  “Nomads, huh?”

“Nomads travel as a people, Buffy.  Traveling vampires max out at like six.  Usually more like three. We're just, I dunno, murder-hobos, riding the rails by night.”

Buffy thought that having even three traveling Slayers, rather than just her, would have been incredible.   _ Us against the world _ is miles away from  _ me against the world. _


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shan (that's Chanterelle/Lily/Anne Steele) makes her first appearance. Buffy settles in for the night.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warnings for mentions of suicidal ideation, drug abuse, and self-harm. All contained in a few paragraphs, between "Do you wish she hadn't saved you?" and "You said the demon, like it was someone else." 
> 
> Long story short, Shan's not doing very well with the whole vampirism thing.

The lair had a three-car garage.  Snazzy. There was a vintage car with a logo Buffy didn't recognize, not that she was an aficionado, and a recent Volvo that was probably going to last its owner a good long time, which was probably a big selling point for vamps.  Buffy squeezed her behemoth into the third spot.

She and Willow got out.  She grabbed Mr. Gordo and her toiletries bag.

“What about the rest?” asked Willow.

“Tomorrow.  I'm done til like tomorrow afternoon.  I just gotta de-grunge my mouth and then I'll be dead to the world.”

“Cool.  We're in the east wing.  Which is really just the girls’ rooms, a full bath, the music room, and the non-business computer.  Which is a lot when I say it. East is the boys and their stuff.”

“Upstairs?”

“Darla and her library.  Probably other things too.  Even I don't go up there.”

Which meant it was probably something Buffy would want to know, if she was staying, which apparently she was.  Tonight wasn't the night, though.

Buffy hit the east bathroom.  The mirror was fogged. She wiped it off, saw steam and a full tub.  Possibly drawn for someone who wasn't here yet, but she'd bet a vampire.

She pivoted.  Yep. Vampire.  Blonde. She was submerged up to her chin, but buffy could make out more than a few tattoos.  Process of elimination said this was Shan.

It clicked that, to Shan, Buffy wasn't sizing up a vamp so much as looking too closely at a naked stranger.  She turned toward the sink.

“There's no way of saying that you don't have to look away that doesn't sound like I'm coming on to you, is there?”  said probably-Shan.

“Gotta admit, I've seen this movie before.”

“Then it's going to get real weird when I say nice things about the way you smell.”

“Yeah, especially 'cause I'm pretty ripe right now.”

“You don't smell  _ good, _ silly, you smell human.”

“And now you bite me because you didn't get the memo.”  Should have pocketed some holy water. She always remembered her holy water.  What was wrong with her?

“Just keeping warm in here.”

The steam from the bath was pretty serious.  Buffy imagined a human like her would be scalded.

“You're Shan, right?  Is that short for Shannon?”

Shan shook her head, scattering a few drops of hot water off of her long hair.  “Chanterelle, actually,” she said apologetically. “It's this wild mushroom. Tastes like apricots, I hear.  I thought it sounded French and expensive.”

“Oh.  Never had one.  Do vampires get cold?”

“We're cold all the time.  We don't get chilled or anything, but I touch my face and it's cold.”

“And that bothers you.”

“Yeah.  Some days it’s OK, like, I can think, you know, doll parts.  Other days, I can’t stop thinking how I’m stuck in a corpse. I warm my blood up in a real hot bath, and for a little while after, it feels less like I’m dead.”

“Ok, I’m going to stick this toothbrush in my mouth now, so, you know, monologue away.  I’m listening.”

“Thanks.”

“Yeah, I figure you can’t vent to your housemates.”  Buffy started to brush.

“That’s real compassionate of you.  I guess I forgot humans were like that.”

Buffy hadn’t thought of herself as compassionate for a long time.  She hoped she really was, and not just a little less stone-hearted than a house of  literal soulless monsters. Not that anyone here seemed to have a heart made entirely of stone.  Even that Warren guy had enough person in him to be angry. It occured to Buffy that she might be sticking around partly out of curiosity.  Willow  _ had _ said she was a cat.

“Anyway, yeah.  I feel dead. If I think about my body at all, I notice that it’s dead.  There’s all sorts of stuff that happens, you know, behind the scenes or whatever, and I can feel that it’s not happening with me.  I breathe to talk. And then I don’t breathe when I’m not talking. I can try breathing when I’m just standing stilll, but it makes me tired.  It’s not an automatic thing anymore. Imagine if you tried to never stop doing jumping jacks, just because you felt wrong not doing them. It’s like that.  And, like, drinking blood isn’t like eating food. You stop being hungry, but you don’t feel satisfied, or full, or anything. You just don’t need blood anymore.”  Shan looked down, folded her hands across the top of her belly. “I’m sorry, I’m ranting.”

“No, you’re good,” said Buffy through a mouthful of toothpaste.

“I even miss the gross stuff, you know?  Not, like, being sick, but burps and toots and stuff.  I guess that’s my white trash giveaway.”

“Don’t say that.”  Buffy said it reflexively, but the humanity of Shan’s tone was part of what prompted the reflex.

“Yeah, I know.  The people I come from are alright.  I liked a lot of them. But there’s a way you get looked at.  It’s why I wanted to be a vampire, you know, the whole sexy euro art-goth thing.”

Buffy specifically avoided making it look like a spit-take when she spat into the sink.  “You…”

“I asked Darla.  Before the Harvest.  She told me I’d have to help her.  So I did. Just, you know, giving information.  Nothing super important. She kept her deal, too.  Once everything was said and done, this weird culty guy, Luke, who I guess made the magic part happen, told her to just kill me, said I wasn’t among the elect.  She said she’d always hated Calvinists, and punched him out. Or that's how she tells it. I wasn't there. I was getting ready to make my debut. I got all dressed up, filed my nails just perfect, shaved my legs fresh, plucked my eyebrows and all.  I’d been doing gym stuff and eating health food, and I quit smoking. Even bought some of those teeth strips. The whole idea was that I’d look perfect forever. She told me about standing up for me a few days later, when I realized that I hated what she’d done to me. I was all blanked out on the couch, all cried out, and she said it like it'd make me feel better.”

“Do you wish she hadn’t saved you?”

“I mean, I hate this.  But I sorta came around to not wanting to be  _ gone _ dead.  That’s always scared the shit outta me--sorry--which, you know, made the whole undead thing seem pretty nice.  For a while after, though, you know, I was weighing pros and cons. Life's a bitch and then unlife's a bastard, and then you never die.  So, I dunno, the rock and a hard place thing scared me enough that I sort of do whatever to make staying here not seem so bad.”

“Like hot baths?”

“Yeah.  I dodged a bullet on account of the fact that vampires can’t do any drug that doesn’t go straight in the bloodstream.”

“Heroin was a bridge too far, huh?”

“It just sucked.  Our chemistry must be different from yours, because I tried it, hated it, had no problem not doing it ever again.  I hear a lot of cities got vampires making all kinds of designer stuff that works on us. Guess I’m lucky we don’t get up here.”

Buffy had seen discarded syringes in vamp lairs before, a few times.  Somehow she’d thought it was something less mundane.

“Yeah, guess so.”

“You know we don’t heal, right?  That sounds like some symbolic thing, when I say it, but, like, we don’t scab up, scar over, any of that.  Our cells don’t make repairs. It’s the demon in us. Can’t leave a mark. I get cut, or burned, and then the demon just undoes it, and I look at my skin, and I feel like it’s beaten me.”

Buffy thought to say, that, yeah, a lot of girls she’d met had tried that, but if Shan wasn’t putting anything into words, then she wanted Buffy to act like she didn’t know.  Which was fine.

“Ink seems to stay, though,” said Buffy.

Shan looked down her body at her tattoos.  “Yeah. I really like all of these. And if I ever want to change them out, you know, it’s bloody, but the demon gives me a fresh canvas at the end.  No lasers or anything. I do all kinds of makeup too. Try and look all fucked-up. Like Siouxsie after a big cry. But, um, if you want, I can do nice makeup l too.  You know, on you.”

“Yeah, sure.  Sometime when I’m settled in.”  Buffy told herself to remember she’d made the promise.  “You said _the demon_ , like it was someone else.”

“Yeah.  They say it’s in there where my soul was.  And they say that means I’m the demon, and I’m not me.  But if I’m the demon, the demon basically thinks it’s me.  So I guess I don’t know what’s the difference, except for the, you know, physical vampire stuff”

Buffy rubbed her eyes.  Yawned. She wanted to ask if Shan thought something was missing, but she couldn’t see how that wouldn’t sound like an accusation.

“Sorry,” said Shan in a small voice.  “You gotta sleep. I’ll shut up. I probably sound totally pathetic and selfish, dumping this on you.  It’s just…”

“Who else, right?” said Buffy.  As she walked toward Willow’s room, she realized just what she’d said.  Had it been  _ who else _ for three whole years?

The bed had been made.  Willow smiled and gestured at it.  Buffy ditched her boots, belt, and bra, then looked at the snake bracelet.  “Do I have to sleep in this? Like am I gonna get murdered if I don't?”

“Actually, I kinda want to take a look at it,” said Willow.

Buffy tossed it over, gathered what she'd taken off into something like a neat pile, and crawled in wearing the rest of her clothes.  Her car keys were poking into her hip. She considered putting them on the end table, and instead stuck them in her back pocket. There were too many sheets for the southern California summer, and Buffy was in slay-gear.  She’d wake up cooking at some point, but she didn’t care.

Willow went to leave.  “Want me to kill the light?”

“Please.” Buffy wondered if she’d sleep through Willow tucking herself in.  It was a big enough bed that she might. She thought about what a cold, unbreathing body would be like, next to her in a bed.  “You know,” she said, “unless I go for the couch, you’ve got me for a space heater now, pretty much until further notice.”

Willow looked puzzled.  “Buffy, I don’t mind being cold.”

She hit the light.   Buffy faded quickly.


	6. Interlude A

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Warren has a new big-boy project from the Master, now that he's under the same roof as the Slayer.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content notes for the chapter: Warren's the POV character. Warren's a prick. This is just under a thousand words spent inside his head. It's actually plot-relevant because trust me, I don't put him in gratuitously. Also like a split-second, not explicit reference to Xander's shitty dad.

Warren walked into the west common room to see Xander thoroughly occupied with this week's comics.  Wednesday was new comic day, which meant nightfall on Tuesday was time to go to the shop and collect their protection fee of, as he put it,  _ one of everything except the crap. _

On the one hand, not having to pay had broken Marvel's stranglehold on Xander's tastes. On the other, that meant he’d gotten the same haircut as the no-longer-new, never-actually-hip-with-the-kids Green Lantern.  Warren was convinced he’d make a Booster Gold fan out of Xander instead, but he’d forgotten that idiots are always unpredictable to the rest of us.

“Oracle's in my seat,” he said, lifting the pile set aside for Willow.  Since before they were sired, Willow'd known that Batman had a cool redhead hacker as a sidekick, and with all the free time they had here, she’d gotten deep into exactly zero other characters.  So any issue with her in it got first-read from Willow, even if she had no idea what else was going on in the series.

He placed himself read-over-the-shoulder distance from Xander.  Oh, god, pop-art and a floating green potato with bad teeth. What in fuck’s name were the X-Men coming to?

“So,” said Warren, “Literally no input on having the actual factual Slayer wandering around town, or waltzing through our house, which, may I remind you, has real work going on in it?”

“Dude, it’s not my call.  You’re just pissed because you have to share space with a human.  Or because Willow got to overrule you and you have that whole  _ anything you can do I can do better _ thing with her.  Or something I don’t know.  I mean, I feel like you’ve got a lot of free-floating grievance going on, so really it’s anyone’s guess.”

Warren got up and ruffled Xander's hair. “I’m not mad, son, just disappointed.”  He started to walk away.

“Oh, ha ha, very funny, doing cliche dad-talk to the guy with daddy issues.”

“Hey, the low-hanging fruit'll get eaten by someone else if I don’t pick it for myself.”

“Yeah, Dad never pretended he wasn’t angry.  Angry was pretty much his brand.”

“If you’re explaining, you’re losing.  Basic rule of debate, man.” The two of them were shouting across the hall now.  Xander sounded pissed, but Warren was just raising his voice to be heard while he continued toward his room.

The fact of the matter was that Warren had been disappointed for so long that it was starting to make him angry.  They weren't ugly ducklings anymore, they were peregrine falcons, apex predators of the skies. Warren got it, but Xander either didn't realize or didn't care.  The first possibility was sad, and the second was contemptible. Not to sound like an actual hardass dad or anything, but he was failing to live up to his potential.

Anyway, there was a phone call to make.  Warren shut the door to his room behind him, and rang the Master.

“So, they found the tracker.  I told you they would. Chief Engineer Harley Quinn and I may not see eye-to-eye, but she really is pretty fucking good.”

“Don’t swear at your boss, Warren.”

“Come on, they do it in mob movies all the time.  We’re like them, man. A couple tough sons-of-bitches you don’t wanna fuck with.”

“Stay on target.”

Warren stifled a laugh.  He’d gotten the Master saying that without realizing it was a Star Wars reference.  It was a point of pride.

“Upside, they blame it on you, not me, because I’m just the guy who makes sure the blood gets drained and packaged right.  So you're still the principal, which they already think, whereas I am just little old me. Downside, until we come up with something else, we won’t be able to track the Slayer’s movements outside the house.”

“Well, that’s what listening to what they talk about  _ in _ side the house will help with.  You’ve got a bunch of rooms ‘bugged,’ as they say. already, such that you might better inform me about my wayward daughter and her wayward progeny.  Just, you know, pay attention. Shift focus to the Slayer. I trust you to understand how circumstances have changed”

“I got a lot of stuff on my plate, but sure.  I’m taking the bugs out of the bathrooms and the Slayer’s room, though.  I do  _ not _ need a 24/7 feed picking up on any suspicious human bodily functions.”

“I was going to ask you to do the same, in fact.”

Warren was taken aback.  The Master was even more paranoid than he was, so he’d expected to have to grovel a bit for that one.  Affected groveling, of course, not the genuine article. He was fully expecting to concede the bedroom, too.

“Look, that’s going to be where the sex happens, if it happens.  You don’t get to listen in on Willow having sex. That’s my granddaughter you’re talking about.”

Warren hadn’t thought of that, but he was glad that the Master had.  Sex was only slightly less obsolete and undignified than feeding straight from the artery.  Warren respected Willow's mind enough that he didn't need to be reminded of all the other parts of her that he didn't respect.

“Besides, you can only get so invasive before they don’t forgive you.”

“You sure?  I’ve been poking around Washington from here for fun, and the feds?  They are on some next-level shit. I copycat them, and we are gonna have one tight little Bram Stoker’s  _ 1984 _ here in no time.”

“Do as you're told, and nothing else.  I know what I want from you, and I know you’ll do it, and do it right.”

“Damn skippy.”

Warren smiled.  He had a new big-boy project.  The UC Sunnydale engineering kids who remembered him from back when would be so jealous.  Local boy makes good, front page headline.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some notes on the comics mentioned:
> 
> The Green Lantern in question is Kyle Rayner, introduced in the 90s in one of those big change-everything soft reboots of the franchise that big two comics do. He had serious 90s hair, and the covers don't always do it justice.
> 
> Booster Gold is the time-traveling Zeppo of the DC Universe, more or less. I actually agree with Warren (horror of horrors) that Xander ought to be a fan.
> 
> Oracle is Barbara Gordon, once Batgirl before she got shot and paralyzed. Before she got rebooted into being Batgirl again, she was part of the middle generation of the bat-fam, alongside Dick Grayson as Nightwing and later Jason Todd as Red Hood. I miss when that middle generation was considered a distinct thing.
> 
> The comic Xander is reading is X-Force (volume 1) #116, the first issue of the Peter Milligan-Mike Allred run that would become the X-Statix. It's fucking great, actually, if very cynical, and sometimes just plain mean, in its humor. This places our first five chapters and two interludes during the night of May 29, 2001, if the official Marvel site is to be believed about release dates. So that's where I've fudged the timeline forward to, from The Wish's original airdate in December 1998


	7. Interlude B

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The resistance gets some news.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a tiny one. We'll hear more from Jenny & Giles and the rest soonish.
> 
> No specific content warnings for the chapter.

Jenny threw back a shot of vodka and opened the lid on her kettle a crack, so that it wouldn’t wake Rupert with a whistle.  He wasn’t supposed to be at her place after sundown. Even if vamps couldn’t enter uninvited, there was always the possibility that one of them would try something creative, if they knew that both resistance leaders were under the same roof.  But he needed not to be alone, and, well, she loved him. 

Enough to let him sleep while she soothed her nerves with alcohol and chamomile, Not enough to give her the peace of mind to fall asleep without.  If she did end up pulling an all-nighter, she’d go check if the Sunnydale PD had any pending cases that pointed to vampire activity. Probably pointless, but it was an excuse to sit at a computer and tell herself she was helping.

She contemplated the bottle, and put it away.  If this was gin, he’d have officially made her English.  The kettle was probably ready enough. She turned off the heat, poured the water, and squeezed enough honey into the cup to indulge her sweet tooth.

She was so anxious that just waiting for the tea to steep was miserable work.  Which, again, if she really couldn’t sleep, she’d work on something. Rupert could be the one of them that functioned in the morning.  She’d be delegating.

The phone rang.  She picked up.

“Lovelace here,” she said, trying to sound at all in charge.  The codename was good old Ada. That it kept her safe had started to matter less than that it made her feel like someone capable and important, and not a scared schoolteacher trying her best in extreme circumstances.   _ Extreme circumstances _ being a polite way of saying  _ this place is killing me. _

“Yo.’  Larry was on the other end.  He was working the wiretaps tonight. “You’re gonna want to get dressed and armed, and come over here,” he said, “Big Grey is talking to Nerdsferatu, and, uh, I don’t even wanna say on this line.  But it’s big.”

“How big?” asked Jenny.

“Big like I don’t wanna say.  Now get some pants on and get your ass to the safehouse.”

“I’m wearing pants.  If you weren’t gay I’d ask you not to perv on your teacher in such a bossy way,”

“Look,” sighed Larry, “This is a game-changer.”

“A game-changer?”

“As in shit might really change for us.”

He sounded like he meant it.  “Alright,” said Jenny. “Let me get my coat.”  She wasn’t going to put her doubts away.  Putting your doubts away was too dangerous.  But he really sounded like he meant it.


	8. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Willow has questions about presence and absence and mortals and vampires. And Buffy, of course.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Willow's a programmer, not a hard scientist, in case that's not clear.
> 
> They won't be up this quick after one another typically, I just wanted this one ready to go after that brief interlude and long wait.
> 
> Content note for Warren and for a brief mention of smoking as self-harm.

Willow couldn’t figure out how to make it work.  She’d scrapped the whole thing and decided to focus on a hardware solution.  So, let’s see whether a vampire’s absence of reflection can be detected by an optical scanner, and the machine itself only lets you in if it detects not-reflection.  She knew they showed up in photographs. And a camera is pretty darn close to a human eye. So if your eye couldn’t see a reflection, presumably your camera wouldn’t take a picture of one.  She made a mental note to steal a really high-end camera. How did no one in this house own a camera? So, what would the scanner scan for--there isn’t anything there versus there _is nothing_ there.  When she looked in the mirror, did she really just see an empty room, or was there somehow an imperceptible Willow-shaped absence?  How do you measure absence?

She made a mental note to never go down the rabbit hole of whether absence was itself an observable phenomenon, because that would mess her up for days.  Except she had a job to do, so she’d have to. She wasn’t ready for Buffy to see her like that.

“Hey, Warren!” she shouted into the half-open door in his part of the workshop.

“Yeah?”  She could hear the tapping of an old-fashioned typewriter.  The bane of their existence. The most need-to-know documentation had to be kept away from the internet, for fear of hackage, not to mention Grandpa’s patchy tech literacy.

“What can you do with optical scanners?”

“Aside from scan optics?”

“I mean treat this as a hardware problem.”

“You mean like check for vampire-hood in order to log on at all?”

“That one.”

“Well, why not a thermal scanner?  You could maybe fake that, but it’s a thought.”

Maybe.  “Okay, but we’re room temperature.  And you’d get false positives.”

“Fair,” he said neutrally.  That was Warren-speak for _you’re probably right but I want to end this conversation._ “Fuck!” he said, to no one in particular.

“Fuck?” she said.

“Routine typewriter problem.  The cursing was because typewriters are bullshit.”  Willow agreed, but it was funny just how steamed Warren got.

“Yeah, too bad we have to live in the stone age.”

“Only because the white hats have a hacker with honest-to-god actual witchcraft on her side.  And fuck the stone age, the stone age was building toward something. This is the space age. As in, we will never colonize space, get over it.”

It hit Willow that the scanner would do just fine shutting you out if it saw a reflection.  And that, yes, dummy, absence is a thing, that’s why we have the word vacuum. God. All it took to turn her into a crazy person was to use the wrong word for something she read about in elementary school.

But wouldn’t there be some sign if the reflection was of a Willow-shaped patch of vacuum?  How does missing look different from never there? Maybe put herself next to Buffy in the bathroom mirror?  And then walk away and have Buffy tell her what it looked like when she wasn’t there? Like, was there a difference?  Maybe humans could see it, and vampires couldn’t. Maybe they just got used to it being missing.

Or maybe the optical scanner was just a bad idea.

Warren’s voice came again from behind the door.  “Yo, Earth to Rosenberg. I said a mean thing. Aren’t you gonna banter back?”

Willow hadn’t realized she’d spaced out like that.

“Sorry.  I think we’re scratching the scanner idea.”

“Yeah, I still say we can’t invent the Vamp-ternet.  It’s a better bet to have couriers. Stronger, faster, more lethal.  Rule by force, right?”

“Yeah, whatever.  Sorry-not-sorry to change the subject, but what the hell are you doing down here at all hours?”

“Not being around your human.”

“She’s not my human.  She’s just a cute girl.”

“Whatever.  She sweats and she breathes and she’s just a presence.”

Willow liked it.  She hadn’t realized how calming it was to hear a heartbeat near her, to smell food cooking again.  Somehow Buffy made the place feel more real than it did with just vampires. “Oh, a _presence.”_

“Look, what do you want me to say?  Human presence is an affront to the senses.  Don’t tell me it doesn’t bother you smelling her farts from three rooms away.”

“Classy.”  There was no telling Warren this, but even one of those brightened up the house if the timing was right.  Maybe Shan had a point about having lost things upon being sired, because it took a lot for Willow to find the presence of a living body anything but a comfort.  Or Willow was just weird and clingy and obsessed. She told herself under her breath not to go there, and then spoke up. “I swear you’d be the best hunter in the house, the way you claim to notice that stuff.”

“Sure thing, Jimbo,” said Warren in the fake southern accent he used every time Willow brought up physically interacting with _the livestock_.  “We’ll nab us a ten-point buck there.”

“Is giving deer a points value actually a thing people do?”

“It’s a thing mortals do, so technically.”

“Is ten points good?”

“Who cares?”  Warren closed the door behind him just firmly enough for Willow to know she’d gotten to him.  Her work here was done. Well, not her actual work, but she’d pissed Warren off, so she could call it a day.  She headed upstairs, making sure to shut the basement doors behind her.

Approaching the kitchen, Willow smelled cooled-off bacon grease.  Sure enough, it was encrusting a pan. Crumbs in the toaster too. Breakfast food.  Was Buffy just waking up? Willow knew the night-day thing was getting wonky for her.

The fan in the bathroom was running.  She approached. Door open, light on. Not a lot of warmth radiating from the room, no steam either.  No significant smells of any kind. Why hadn’t Buffy switched them off? How long ago did she forget? Did she bail?  Like, eat breakfast and bail and Willow had been busy talking to stupid Warren this whole time.

She checked in the bathroom.  The toothbrush had moved. Buffy’s hairbrush was elsewhere.  There was some old toothpaste-spittle in the sink. Willow switched off the light and fan.  She guessed she’d check the bedroom for Buffy.

There she was.  Sleeping deep. Live and warm and inert, with her daytime clothes all together.  Willow tried to collect herself. Kept thinking about absences and vacuums and presence, i.e., her job.  She didn’t care about the visual scanner now, but this was pissing her off. Does vacuum look like air or is it somehow different?  She took a deliberate inhale and exhale. Tried to think about her lungs as they inflated and deflated. The air in this room was a hair warmer as she breathed it in.  Maybe that’s it. Agitated molecules were the difference. She tried to breathe along with Buffy’s sleep-breaths, but her head was buzzing so much that she couldn’t figure out if she was breathing the same as Buffy.  She was warmer. It felt nice. Maybe it shouldn’t have. How could someone so combustible as herself like warm air? Was it a self-destruction thing like Shan’s smoking?

Maybe Darla knew some old vamp lore Willow didn’t.  Knew about alive versus undead. Whatever that meant.  Willow thought the whole distinction was all sort of arbitrary, except live animals like humans seemed so much simpler.  In some ways, maybe they got the better deal. Or maybe guys like Warren were just better at being vampires. Darla had it figured out, but she was old-school.  Wild, not domesticated.

Willow ascended to the stairs.  No _do not disturb_ sign.  She knocked.

Darla’s voice came from behind the door.  “Who is it?”

“Willow.”

“Come in, dear.”

Willow entered, and shut the door behind her.  Darla was at the computer, which meant she was journalling.  She liked to keep track of her unlife as it happened, and had suggested Willow do the same.  Said Willow would be glad she’d done it, decades on.

“What were things like with mortals for you?” asked Willow,  “Before Grandpa and everyone settled here?”

“I’ve always found them them dull, sweetie.  All that shame and guilt is the sole constant throughout their civilizations.  And the ones that decide to be wicked are so full of the novelty of it. It takes a lack of a soul to understand the hunt properly, I think.  But this is about the Slayer, isn’t it.?”

It was sort of about reflections, but, yeah, that was what was nagging at Willow. “Uh-huh,” she said, sort of embarrassed that she was that transparent.

Darla put her computer to sleep, and walked to Willow.  “I’ve never seen one, in all honesty. A young man I traveled with once killed one, but I wasn’t there.  To be honest, I don’t think much of them. You know I’ve never considered mortals to be trophies. But this is about _our_ slayer, isn’t it?”

Darla did this sometimes, anticipated Willow’s questions.  Three years on, she was still teaching Willow how to be a vampire.  Willow just kept silent this time.

“She’s a funny case.  She doesn’t have a Watcher with her, and I suspect she hasn’t got one at all.”

“A Watcher’s like the Slayer’s boss, right.”

“Boss, mentor, owner, take your pick.  The Watcher keeps the Slayer focused on her mission.  But this one’s free of that. I think she’s a bit feral, in fact.  I like that.”

“Because she’s more vulnerable?”

“Oh, that’s what our Master would say.  But I like it because I think she’ll be a good influence on you, and vice versa.  She’s a hunter like us, and she’s survived without any watcher. That drive for survival is a powerful thing.  We all need to have it to avoid complacency.”

Willow wasn’t going to argue about her drive for survival.  This was Darla on her old _the townies have it easy_ kick.  So what if Willow had it easy?  Easy was fine. Easy was easy.

“My point,” Darla continued, “Is that she now has a way to survive.  And you have something to covet. That rising above impulse is the next step.  Something more concrete than just those projects of yours and Warren’s. Something longer-term for the Slayer than getting her next meal.”

“Xander doesn’t have that, and he’s doing fine.  Do you even have that?”

Darla smiled.  “Xander’s a boy.  His aimlessness is a form of humility in place of machismo.  Trust me, we’re all better off, including him.”

Darla knew men better than Willow, so Willow supposed she’d take Darla’s word for it.

Darla smiled and put a hand on Willow’s cheek,  “And I have you.”


	9. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Buffy tries to learn about Willow and what she wants.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No specific warnings for the chapter that I can think of, apart from what's in the tags.

“Settled in, have we?”

Buffy wasn't sure how loaded the question was.  She was as moved-in as she tended to get, which meant there was still a lot in the van.  So she wasn't lying when she told Darla “More or less.”

For a someone all the housemates talked about so much, Darla was still an unknown.  Warren was against Buffy, but the rest of the townies in the house were against him, and they didn't strike her as the type to ally with people they disliked for a cause.  But Darla had helped make the Harvest happen. And everyone seemed to like her. That meant she was the closest thing to a credible threat under this roof.

Which meant it was as good a time as any to get to know her.

“Willow says you did the windows,” said Buffy.

“Self-taught.”  Darla smiled. “Centuries of free time.  Sometimes I worry about young vampires. Television was enough of a time-waster before video stores and Nintendo.”

“Kids these days.”

“I'm not a Luddite, dear.  Word processing has changed my life.  It's the passivity. I'd feel the same way if they sat around reading novels for hours.”

“You're a real doer, huh?”  Buffy took note that Darla would have a computer somewhere.  A computer meant email. If there was someone to email.

“Vampires isolate ourselves as a matter of course.  If all you do is hunt alone, wait alone, and follow stories by people who aren’t there, you stop being anyone at all.”

“Willow's said a lot about boredom.  Shan too.” Buffy could get her talking about the unknowns in the house this way.

“Poor Shan.  She'll grow into herself.  It's a shock, being sired, and not every vampire adapts so quickly.  Imagine going to bed a child, and waking up two feet taller, woman-shaped, with a fresh coat of hair, blood between your legs, and desires you couldn’t parse.”

“Yeah, but people expect to grow up.  People tell you what’s going to happen.”  Buffy didn't expect to want to stand up for Shan, but she did. 

“Do they now?  I've forgotten.”

At this point, Buffy could press further, let on that she knew Shan had chosen this.  She could gauge how loyal and caring Darla was to the vampires she'd made, at the cost of appearing confrontational or putting blame on Shan.  But it was Willow she needed to know about.

So she said, “And Willow…” trailing off to see what Darla would decide to bring up.

“She's terribly infatuated.  And she's said she enjoys your company.  It's been good for her.”

Buffy was quiet.  Mom approved, apparently.

“That isn't a problem, is it?  My Willow-branch doesn't always correctly identify the smell of her own.”

“The what now?”

“I think you kids call it gaydar.”

“Oh!  No. That part's good.  I think. Maybe I won't know until I do stuff.”  Buffy was blushing in spite of herself.

“Well, my Willow hasn't done...stuff…either, as far as I know, and I've helped her achieve certainty.”  Was this an offer or a putdown?

“So she has a wardrobe full of kink uniforms just for the look?” asked Buffy.

“They make her feel more powerful.  Like Chanterelle's tattoos, or Xander's...well, that's a puzzle.  I imagine there's something rather boyish.”

“You know them all pretty well, huh?”

“I made them, dear.  Except Warren. My Master made him.”

“Like, literally, with a bite?”

“Perhaps.  But I'm referring to the greater sense. He made him with the same promise we all give the next generation of vampires.  He told him he'd be something. And so he was.”

Buffy had just about had it with Darla's loftiness.  “Let me guess. You spend your time writing vamp self-help books?  Seven Habits of Highly Effective Draculas?”

Darla smiled.  “Erotica, actually.”

“Do the kids know?”

“I'm sure they do.  I'm not ashamed. It's my turn to have the fantasies, after all.”

Buffy had clearly missed a few steps there.

“The mortal woman who became Darla was, well, there are terms for it that I find contemptuous, and terms I find condescending, but she was an actress for hire, when it came down to it.  Clients gave her a script of sorts that would give them sexual gratification, and she did that script to them, or them to her, or some variation thereupon.”

“Thereupon,” repeated Buffy, rolling the word around in her mouth.  “So old-timey.” Vamps loved to brag about how old they were. Like their whole idea of success was not getting dusted.

“I don't let go of good words, sweetie.  Our kind let go of too much already, as it is.”

“Willow said you have a library?”

“It's not just humans that have access to movable type, you know.  Every civilization needs its stories preserved.”

“Stories?”

“Oh, things you're all too young to know.”  Darla smiled.

Which meant things that a Slayer would want to know.  If Buffy were willing to keep being one.

“So which is it?” asked Buffy.  “Other people's stories and not letting go, or being a doer?”

“If my Willow does her part, we don't have to choose.”

“Which is?”

Darla smiled again.  “Her lips are far looser than mine.”

“In general?”

“For the special ones.”

The idea that there were such a thing as special ones was something.  Buffy wasn’t jealous, wasn’t attached enough to have things to be jealous of, but being part of a line of disposable girls wasn’t where she wanted to be.  “Well, let’s hope I turn out special.”

Darla smiled.  “You don’t have to hope.  It’s not important how you turn out.  You’re special now. Willow’s decided.”

“How would she know?  It’s been, what, maybe two weeks?”  Buffy wasn’t sure. She didn’t have a lot of ways to track time anymore.  School was out forever, and seasons didn’t exist here. No steady job, or unsteady job, meant no paycheck.  And Buffy didn’t get out much. So now all she knew for sure is that she hadn’t had her period yet. Not that her body had ever been Old Faithful on that front.  Maybe if she got the chance to grow up and stop running for her life.

“Do you really think we know people when we fall in love with them?”  Darla’s I-know-everything tone had begun to shift toward you-don’t-know-anything.  The Q&A session might get cut short soon. “We see someone, we love them, we get to know them, and we stop loving them.  Everyone’s best as fantasy. Especially when the fantasy is named  _ Slayer. _ ”

Buffy sighed.

“It’s true.  If a vampire hasn’t figured out she wants to fuck girls yet, she decides she just wants to hurt them.  And the Slayer’s the girl to hurt. It’s a whole genre with us, you know; Slayers and vampires in bodice-rippers.”

Buffy tried not to look worried, tried instead to think of real true things Willow had done.  Of Willow not wanting to kill her, Willow keeping her hands to herself in bed. “Who rips whose bodice?"

Darla smiled, “Well, that depends on what you’re into.”  She walked off. Buffy knew that asking her to wait would just give her the opportunity to silently refuse.

Maybe it was time to press the best friend.

********

The best friend in question was parked on the couch with a mug of blood--still weird--and a paperback he was more holding than reading.  She placed herself next to him as casually as she could manage.

“So, do you and Willow ever talk about girls?”

“Well, hello to you too, new housemate who I still don't know very well.”

“Sorry.”

“Nah, I’m busting your proverbial chops.  Or, I guess, proverbially busting your, uh, hypothetical chops.”

“Oh.”  Buffy wasn’t sure how to handle Xander, still.  She suspected she could take him in a fight, but talking to him was bizarre, like she didn’t know who was being awkward, but it was probably both of them.

“We don’t, really.  Willow doesn’t have much to say beyond  _ girl hot. _  Which, to be fair, girl hot.  But she’s kind of an all-shapes, all-sizes kind of girl.  And she doesn’t get real specific when it comes to sex, at least not to me.  I know what outfits she finds sexy, I guess.”

“And?”

“Well, for a computer geek she’s surprisingly into athletic wear.”

“Oh, hey, something I actually own.”

Xander looked sheepish, like he knew how it hurt when someone took for granted things you didn’t have. “If you want we can go steal some clothes.  I have been told I have a remarkably dispassionate eye for women’s fashion. So I can judge style and Willow can tell you you’re hot. It’ll be fun!”

“I guess.”

“Oh.  You two haven’t…”  He gestured ambiguously.

“Should we have?”

“I don’t think she’s gonna rush you. She’s a gentleman that way.”

“Good for her.”

Buffy only maybe believed him.  Willow didn’t take her back to the lair to play checkers.  Unless Shan was talking, though, she’d exhausted her intel.  Which meant it was time to tease it out of Willow herself. That’d be a task.  Buffy had a gift for gossip, but flirtation was another story.

She got up to leave.

“The clothing theft offer stands, if you guys are up for it,” Xander said.

Buffy gave a not-entirely-forced thumbs-up.  It had been awhile since she got new clothes.  And those were just replacements for stuff ruined in slays.  


But this was still useless.  If it was sleep with Willow or end up homeless and hunted, she’d just have to improvise.  And she did have athletic wear. This wouldn’t be so bad. Willow was kind of a babe, in a scary mistress of pain way.  Yeah, Buffy could do this.


	10. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Buffy offers sex to Willow. Willow doesn't feel right about it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings specifically for this chapter: This is one of the ones where the consent issues inherent in the premise come into play. Even though she feels wrong about things and doesn't want to take advantage, we get inside the idea Willow's been sold, that as a vampire she's a predator, and the normalization of that idea. It's probably going to be squicky or triggery for some people to see these notions from the perspective of someone who's internalized them, but is questioning them.

Buffy was changing for bed in front of Willow.  That was new. Willow had always seen her duck into the bathroom to change.  Willow turned away when the jeans came down.

“I don’t mind,” said Buffy.

Willow got a good look.  Instead of the typical sweats, on came some running shorts that came up just above mid-thigh.  Like, two-thirds, Willow would estimate. Buffy was on the skinnier side of toned, and she’d shaved her legs, which Willow was pretty sure was also new.

Buffy ditched her shirt and started undoing her bra.

“You sure you don’t mind?” asked Willow.  Buffy had been so reserved until tonight. Had some scary-monster barrier dropped without Willow knowing?  Was Willow not picking up on signals for a couple weeks?

“Take a look,” said Buffy, as she searched for a sleep top in her clothes-pile.

Willow did.  She’d be lying if she said this wasn’t welcome.  Buffy really was pretty skinny for someone that packed that much of a punch.  Ribs showing and everything. She guessed that Slayer strength was like vampire strength, it just happened.

Willow, you idiot, she thought.  Here was her fantasy girl, boobs just out there like some kind of cat toy, and Willow was speculating about the mechanics of her strength.  What kind of lesbian was she? Hell, what kind of vampire? Didn’t they just hunt down what they wanted, rather than eyeballing it like some tourist?

Then Buffy slid the tank top over her head.  She did have shoulders, like, that was some for-real muscle tone.  Willow could still see her nipples. Again, she was being the passive observer.  Why? She knew sometimes she wanted the Slayer to rough her up a little, or sometimes a lot, maybe take some advantage.  But it was like neither of them was the aggressor. Like they were both vampires, or like Willow was some mortal.

This all just felt like it wasn’t happening, and not in a good way.  In an  _ okay, I know I’m a little crazy when I want something, so this can’t be happening like I think  _ kind of way.

“So who did I look like?” said Buffy, seating herself very close to Willow on the bed.  “In the fantasies. Actress, singer, classmate?”

“They were just fantasies, Buffy,” said Willow, silently cursing herself for the non-answer.  Where were all the cruel things she did to the slayer, or the brutal things the slayer did to her?  It was just violence, so why wasn’t she saying it? They were both creatures of violence, as Willow understood it.

“Come on,” said Buffy, “I wasn’t just the word  _ Slayer,” _

“Okay,” said Willow.  “You looked like this one cheerleader in my grade.  Amy Madison. Sometimes you were her, I mean, she was the Slayer.  ‘Cause you’re not any Slayer, you’re Buffy specifically. We were close when we were little, and then she got different.  Like I was someone new who wasn’t any good, or she was someone new who was so much better. And even before I knew I was gay, I thought she was really pretty, and I’d watch her cheer, and think about...god, sorry, you’re hitting on me and I’m dropping my sad old crushes in your lap.”   


Willow sighed.  “But yeah. Hot blonde cheerleader, great face, graceful.  Sometimes you’d fight me in your cheer outfit. With, uh, no panties.”  She left out the anger of the fantasies. Like the fight would prove that Amy wasn’t better, that Willow wasn’t worse, like Willow could  _ make _ Amy accept her again.

Buffy smiled.  It looked a little forced.  “I lost my cheer outfit, but hey, hot blonde ex-cheerleader.  I know some routines. And I can definitely not wear panties” She leaned closer.

Willow could hear Buffy’s heightened pulse.  She knew scared human better than turned-on human, so Buffy might have been less scared and more turned-on than Willow estimated.  But the mix was still no good somehow.

“This feels like a mistake,” said Willow

Buffy looked alarmed. “Is it ever gonna not?  I mean, you vampire, me slayer, we fight, you...I mean someone, um, dies.  The end. Except you wanna...you know, sleep with me.”

Willow did.  Willow really did.  Except not. It had seemed like this cool sexy thing had dropped in her lap.  Like, she might get to, so why not go for it? But she went for it, and now it was...awkward?  Was that making it sound too small? It was like if she did this, she’d ruin whatever she had with Buffy.  Like she wouldn’t get what she wanted, like maybe she shouldn’t. Like if she did get it like this, then it wouldn’t be what she wanted anyway.  
  
She must have been silent awhile, because Buffy spoke up.  “Hey. Is this where you change your mind? And we fight for real this time?”

“I don’t wanna let them kill you.”  It just sort of fell out of Willow’s mouth.

Buffy fell back.  She looked blank. The fear Willow sensed on her had overtaken the arousal entirely.

“I...I think they would,” continued Willow.  “Warren or Grandpa or, like, a lot of them.”

And there it was.  Warren and Grandpa would say to use Buffy and throw her away when she got bored.  And maybe she was a bad vampire, but she hated the way they thought sometimes. Knowing they’d want her to be the predator made the choice clearer.  Willow didn’t want to be like one of them. Not with Buffy.

“Darla wants you to live,” she continued, “and I don’t think it’s an evil plan thing, I think it’s just for me.  And...and I guess I can wait. You know, for you to want to.”

“But what if I don’t ever want to?” said Buffy, hesitantly.

Willow tried to be honest, with herself as well as Buffy.  “Then that’d suck. But I still don’t…” she trailed off and started again, “The house is nicer with you in it.  I’d miss you.”

“So I can stay,” said Buffy flatly.  The fear had dropped away too, now.

“Are you happy here?”  Willow wanted a yes so badly.

“Willow, I’m happy nowhere.  Happy left me behind.”

“Oh,” said Willow.  She couldn’t think of anything else.

“I just want a roof over my head.”

“Oh.”

“Buffy sounded a little choked up now.  “So can I stay?”

“Yeah,” said Willow.  “No strings.” Willow wasn’t sure if she could promise that on behalf of  everyone, but she, at least, wouldn’t attach any strings. Willow wanted to put an arm around Buffy, but every ounce of Buffy’s body language made it look like she was still ready to bolt.  “You want the floor?” she asked.

“Huh?” said Buffy.

“To sleep.  I can try and make it comfy.  We don’t need to share a bed.”

Buffy sighed hard, looked away, then stood up.  “Yeah. Not every night. Buf tonight, yeah.” She sighed again.  “Thanks.”

“Yeah,” said Willow softly, “No problem.”

She wondered what Darla would do if she thought Willow was getting bored of Buffy.  Maybe she’d really meant it, about taking the Slayer out of play. If so, that worked.  Unless Buffy wanted out. But then, like Buffy said, then one of them died. Mortals die.  It was what the word meant.

“Here,” said Willow, standing up to pull the comforter from her bed, “you can sleep on this.”

She and Buffy lay it down, and Willow went to get a pillow.

“Honestly,” said Buffy, “I’ve had way worse.”

She curled up on it.  Willow placed the pillow under her head.

“I’m probably gonna be out pretty soon,” said Buffy, “Unconscious, I mean.  For the night.”

“That’s fine,” said Willow.  And it was. She could keep watch.  She could protect Buffy. She would protect Buffy.  It felt good, to decide to protect someone. Scary, but good.


End file.
